Hardly a day goes by without me being asked what the best exercises are for reducing the size of a females thighs or how to get rid of the ‘flabby bits’ under their arms.  I see people in the gym doing endless amounts of crunches trying to reduce their waist line, but do they have six packs?  I think not.

Women are easily the biggest offenders when it comes to doing exercises for spot reduction purposes.  They do their triceps extension exercises followed by some hip adduction, abduction exercises and then grab the latest abdominal training gimmick in the hopes of looking like the model on the cover of Cosmo.  I once read in a magazine that a movie star did lunges to prevent fat build up in her knees.  Men are doing it also, but it’s usually limited to doing an extra 100 crunches so they can look like the guy on the cover of Men’s Health.

There is one small problem with all these isolation exercises, they don’t burn maximum fat and they certainly don’t target-burn the fat around the muscle being trained.  By that logic if a person chewed a lot due to the huge amounts of food they ate, they’d have huge guts and chiseled jaws.   It’s simple, the muscle doesn’t own the surrounding fat.

If you are spending a lot of time on the hip adductor machine to reduce the size of your hips you’re really just wasting time.  Exercises such as hip adduction, abduction and the others I listed above isolate a small number of muscles, therefore burn a small amount of calories.  These exercises were intended for rehab purposes or to correct muscle imbalances, but someone decided to market them as fat burners.  Then there’s the ab-roller, ab-dooer, ab-tronic, ab-swing, the vibrating belt and a hundred other ab gimmicks.  These may improve muscle tone (with the exception of the ab-tronic and the belt) of the outer abdominal wall, but again, they burn very little fat.  Also, overuse of the rectus abdominus or six pack muscles can lead to muscle imbalances and poor posture.

Is there a solution to slimmer thighs, tighter butt, wash board abdominal's and toned arms?  The most important thing to address is why the fat is there to begin with.  I guarantee it’s not from eating quality proteins, fats and carbohydrates, drinking plenty of water and getting a good nights sleep.  If you don’t give your body what it needs and only give it junk as fuel you should expect to be overweight and take all the dis-ease that accompanies it.  Don’t think a 20 minute ab class is going make it go away.